Dr Marigold and Mr Chops at Riverside Studios

Dr Marigold and Mr Chops at Riverside Studios

16 December, 2009
by: Naima Khan

Simon Callow shows Naima Khan the many voices of Dickens.

Actor, director, and screenwriter Theodore Lange once said 'Artists should always think of themselves as cosmic instruments for storytelling'. Simon Callow proves himself once more as a master of his art, a virtuoso storyteller in his performance of 'Dr Marigold & Mr Chops' at Riverside Studios.

From the back of a dusty old attic appears Magsman, owner of 'Magsman's Amusements', a circus show featuring amongst others, a spotted baby cared for by a dwarf who is having an affair with a fat lady from Norfolk (an act in her own right). Dickens' ability to depict a range of characters from all walks of life is sometimes overlooked in the midst of pervasive productions of A Christmas Carol. So it's welcome relief to see something for grown-ups which is altogether more insightful. His musings on money, society and relationships is told with erudite poignancy by the unschooled theatre master and his star act, educated by life alone. What's truly impressive is his skill at honing in on the details and complex intricacies involved in the life of an imagined dwarf

Callow takes on the performance as though it were being done at the time of Dickens. To depict the low-class Magsman he drops his 'h's; and for Mr Chops the dwarf, his voice becomes that of a child with an untold number of speech impediments. Fitting perhaps for a Dickensian audience, who might assume people with dwarfism are as intellectually challenged as they are vertically, but not so for today's theatre-goer. Due credit to Callow though who expertly allows Mr Chops's intelligence and cunning to come through.

Dr Marigold is where Callow shines. With no medical or academic background, but named for the doctor who delivered him, Marigold is a Cheap Jack who travels the country in his cart using his charm to sell his wears. Callow shows us the worried mind behind Marigold's confidence. A man who couldn't possibly be anything but happy has a violent wife and and a dying daughter. His emotional goodbye and the tortured replacement of his child with a mute and deaf girl is heartbreaking and darkly beguiling.

Not festive nor cheery but certainly seasonal and very funny, this is an alternative, literary antidote to the tinsel overkill and the glittery perturbation sweeping theatre land.

Naima Khan